AKEMI JOHNSON

Journalist + Creative Writer

Akemi Johnson is the author of Night in the American Village: Women in the Shadow of the U.S. Military Bases in Okinawa, which, in a starred review, Publishers Weekly called “a searing and stylish debut…. A must-read look at the impact of the U.S.’s overseas military presence.” A former Fulbright scholar in Okinawa, Akemi has written about the island, along with issues of race, identity, history, and culture, for The Nation, NPR’s Code Switch, Travel + Leisure, Explore Parts Unknown, and other publications. She has also contributed to NPR’s All Things Considered and been invited to speak about mixed-race identity and the craft of writing at UC Berkeley and other universities. 

Akemi earned an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an AB in East Asian Studies from Brown University. She has taught writing at the George Washington University, the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and the University of Iowa. 

Akemi works at the Fred T. Korematsu Institute, which educates to advance racial equity, social justice, and human rights for all by promoting the importance of remembering one of the most blatant forms of racial profiling in U.S. history: the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. 

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